I have spent 20 years working in nonprofit think tanks, the last 13 as a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas. I also ran the Washington, D.C.-based Council for Affordable Health Insurance for nearly nine years. While I cover a range of political, economic and policy areas, I specialize in health policy. Prior to joining the think tanks, I taught philosophy. I received all three of my degrees—BBA in economics, masters in divinity and Ph.D. in humanities—from Texas universities. I was an ethicist for a medical school's panel reviewing human experimentation. I'm a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Texas Advisory Committee. For several years I was a political analyst for the USA Radio Network, and I hold a 6th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and still teach.

Democrats Stop Blaming Bush and Start Blaming Grover Norquist

WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 28: Grover Norquist (R), president of Americans for Tax Reform, listens to Politico Chief White House Correspondent Mike Allen (L) during a Politico Playbook Breakfast November 28, 2012 at the Newseum in Washington, DC. Norquist is known for advocating the 'Taxpayer Protection Pledge,' which 95 percent of Republicans in Congress signed, promising to oppose all tax increases, but some prominent legislators are now publicly wavering on their commitment to it. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

In their endless quest to blame someone other than their own policies for the country’s economic ills, liberals are focusing less on former President George W. Bush and more on Grover Norquist, founder and president Americans for Tax Reform and creator of the “Taxpayer Protection Pledge.”

In the pledge, which has been signed by more than 1,200 state legislators, 238 members of the House of Representatives and 41 senators (mostly Republicans but also some Democrats) according to ATR’s website, the elected representative promises to oppose or vote against any net new tax increases.

And raising taxes on the wealthy has become the Democrats’ only solution to every problem. Their 20 new taxes in ObamaCare, many of which hit the middle class, was just a downpayment.

If only Republicans had the courage to break the pledge and vote for Obama’s tax increases, Democrats fume, fiscal stability would return to the country and Washington would become a more congenial place. The mainstream media appear to agree.

That economic fantasy got a boost recently when several Republicans asserted that they would not be constrained from raising taxes by having signed the pledge. So perhaps a little perspective would help.

A newly elected member of the House of Representatives, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, recently told a group of state legislators at a conference in Washington that he did not run for office to become the tax collector for Barack Obama’s welfare state. When that congressman refuses to vote for the Democrats’ tax increase proposals, it won’t be just because he signed the pledge.

I have attended Norquist’s Wednesday Meeting, a weekly gathering of about 150 conservative activists, many times. (Full disclosure: I’ve known Grover for 20 years.) Candidates running for office show up regularly to introduce themselves to the conservative community, and virtually everyone begins his or her short presentation by proudly boasting that of having signed the pledge.

No one forced them to sign it; they do so because they want their constituents and other conservatives to know that they can be trusted to oppose tax increases. But the pledge also reinforces a fundamental policy difference: conservatives believe the government spends too much and liberals don’t.

The Heritage Foundation recently released several charts that expose the spending problem. Between 1970 and 2010, median household income has grown from $41,358 to $51,360, an increase of 24.2 percent. Total federal spending, by contrast, grew from $926 billion to $3.6 trillion, an increase of 287.5 percent.

To be sure, the big spenders are a bipartisan lot. Look at the Heritage graph and it is clear that while government spending expanded rapidly in the 1990s under a Republican Congress and President Bill Clinton, it accelerated in 2001, when Republicans controlled both Congress and the White House.

In 2006, the voters booted the big-spending Republicans out, in part because Democrats promised to be more fiscally responsible. It turns out they were even worse than Republicans.

When Obama was elected in 2008, Democrats went into a spending frenzy, which is the primary reason we have added $5 trillion in new debt over the past four years.

Yes, the recession reduced government revenues, dropping from an average of about 18 percent of GDP to a little more than 14 percent. And they are still down, at about 16.1 percent. For most families, when their revenue drops significantly they cut their spending. Most states, also faced with a revenue shortfall, do the same thing.

Not so the federal government under Obama. It supercharged spending, to about 25 percent of GDP.

As a result, a number of states are recovering from the recession; the federal government is only sinking deeper.

Several Republican congressmen have told me they learned their lesson. Between 2001 and 2006 they talked the talk but didn’t walk the walk. They talked about limiting the size of government but voted to grow it. They’ve said they will not make that mistake again.

Grover Norquist is not keeping them tied to the tax pledge, their principles are.

If those Republican pledge signers who are now criticizing the pledge are having second thoughts, they are free to change their positions. But in fairness to their constituents, they should resign their office and run again in a special election. That’s what then-Representative Phil Gramm of Texas did. As a Democrat in the House, it became clear that the leadership would ostracize him for his conservative views. So he resigned his seat and ran as a Republican in a special election—and won.

For the past four years—12 years, really—Democrats have blamed all the country’s problems on George W. Bush. But recently they have started to blame Grover Norquist, too. Grover certainly does his best to encourage new candidates to sign the pledge and those who have signed it to keep that commitment, but he is only the manifestation of a larger principle embraced by conservatives: It’s the government spending, stupid.

Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow at http://twitter.com/MerrillMatthews

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great article sir. I have been making this point for a while now. Ask a liberal how much the federal gov’t should spend annually, and they can’t answer because the truth is that always expect spending to go up. To put a number on how much the government can spend is blasphemy. And whether Obama supporters will acknowledge it or not, Obama’s reelection signals that the electorate wants more spending, bigger deficits and more government.

Gee drjaycadburyphd you never asked me. Had you asked I would have told you the government needs to spend as much as it takes to fullfill it’s mission.

And that mission is funded with the political captital the voters invest in the President and Congress. Of course a broader array of the electorate votes and invests in the President than any single congressperson, so unless both chambers of Congress have an overriding majority to override a Presidential veto the President has the Mandate.

So next time, don’t attempt to put words in my mouth, you can ask and you don’t have to be wrong like Karl Rove or even Steve Forbes by being caught passing on uncreditable misleading information.

drjaycadburyphd, I do agree the electorate wants more spending, bigger deficits and more government if that is what it takes to deal with the issues. You got that right.

Can you say how much it will cost to conduct and win a war? Thing is jobs are as important and even maybe more so to many Americans.

We may disagree as to how we go about creating jobs but the electorate has elected to take the course laid out by President Obama, not Romney, albeit Mitt promised to create 12 million new jobs America passed on his offer.

Perhaps the American people don’t want jobs that neccesitate them working long hours, living 12 to a room and 120 to a bath room. Mitt Romney and McDonalds may like the idea but I think most Americans would want McDonalds to pay a wage where an employee could afford toilet paper soap and water.

Have you bothered to read the Constitution as written by the founding fathers? Does it say anything about giving the Food Stamp President giving out food stamps to any that apply, including foreigners?

The President can only veto legislation. He cannot create it and impose it unless the Congress agrees. He must also defend the Constitution, the one written by the founding fathers of the US and subsequently rent by the leftist bastards now sitting on Supreme Court bench. I guess you missed that part.

Maybe you should brush up on your history and the Constitution before opening your mouth.

economart the United States constituted by the founders failed. The Constitution is not your Founding Fathers doctrine nor document, that would be the Articles of Confederation. So have you read the Constitution commissioned by the Founding Fathers?

Of course food stamps, health care, minimum wage and unemployment benefits were not the intent of the Founding Fathers, they were mostly Slave owners. They half starved the slaves, put a poultice of hot tar oil on the welts made by the whip, bought and enslaved kidnapped foreign and domestic men women and children.

And President’s can and oftend do propose legislation. A bill is enacted when either the President signs it or a two thirds majority of both houses overrides his veto. A bill passed by the Congress is not enacted otherwise.

The mission statement, the intent and purpose of the Constitution is stated in the Preamble to the Constitution and all Articles, Sections, Clauses, Amendments. and Laws enacted goes to the intent and purpose.

The Grover Norquist tax pledge is illegal and unconstitutional, conflicting with elected officials oath of office and underminding the Constitution and the powers delegated in the Constitution to do the job they are elected to do. This issue is more likely to be settled in court and as more elected officials realized the conflict they will be abandoning the pledge.

The coming tax increases were enacted by a Republican Congress and President Bush, the so-called Bush tax cuts have a “Cinderella” cause turning them into a automatic tax increase. The fiscial cliff is another fine mess the Republican/Bush era economic policies have gotten us into.

Not to worry, we need to get the Bush/Republican economic policies out of our system and between the Cinderella tax cuts and the sequester they will self destruct on the own like a mission impossible mission statement.

President Obama and Democrats need only to start from scratch, propose and enact fresh new middle class tax cuts and not get their hands dirty trying to tweak and handling the mess created by the Republicans.

Again, John, to assist with your complete ignorance of recent historical affairs, the reason for the sunset clause was to sidestep the Byrd rule. It was designed to evade a piece of legislation that would have allowed the Senate to block the bill.

Good God, why do Democrats always find themselves offering one erroneous explanation after another? I suppose that is why simpletons like the Democrats vote for dog eating, muslim, foreign born, african kings!

There is no fiscal cliff. There is only the problem of the US following in the footsteps of Japan, the economy having stagnated for 20 years and more. But keep treasuring ignorance over fact.

So the GN pledge is illegal and unconstitutional. So says the Supreme Court? My, the depth of your education just keeps shining with every utterance.

So Bush added about $1.6 trillion with decent tax cuts to the US debt over an 8 year period. And the brainless Obama will have added $6 trillion over a 4 year period with an explosion in government spending. It is certainly Bush that got us into this mess, you deep thinking Democrat.

Obama thought quite highly of those Bush tax cuts when he urged everyone to extend them a further 2 years at the height of the crisis. Now he doesn’t like them anymore. Sounds like another deep thinking Democrat.

John: I can’t imagine how or why the tax pledge would be illegal or unconstitutional. The pledge is not legally binding; people can break it any time they want–like a New Year’s resolution. It just expresses a person’s intent. But your other point is right, the coming “tax increase” ultimately belongs to the Republicans. Because of Senate rules, the Republicans decided not to make the tax cuts permanent. They passed them for 10 years because that approach was not subject to a Senate filibuster. At the time they thought no one would ever support raising those taxes at the end of the 10 years. And it needs to be made clear that Obama and the Democrats support extending ALL of the Bush tax cuts; they just want to exclude the higher income Americans.